If Only
by UndressTheseBeautifulLies
Summary: You can bandage the damage, but you never really can fix a heart...


A twenty something, lonely Jade West always wonders if things could have turned out differently. If she was a better girlfriend, if he hadn't lost it, if she was normal, if he hadn't _left_ her.

_(Should've, would've, could've.) _

She thinks about him every day, you know. Not a day goes past when she feels like she can't breathe, like she just can't go on anymore. It's been three years since they spoke last. Yet she remembers they're last words like it was yesterday. No, she'll never forget that. She'll never forget the tears streaming down her face, masked by the heavy downpour of rain. No, she'll never forget that. She'll never forget the way her body hit the sidewalk in utter despair. No, she'll never forget that. She'll never forget his last words to her.

He turned and looked her straight in the eye. "You're not the girl I fell in love with." That line alone knocked her down. Then he'd left her in the rain, on the sidewalk. That's the way she remembers it, anyway.

They were just out of high school, happy and carefree. They'd grown out of the old battered RV with so many memories held in it like a rusty old trinket box. So they bought an apartment. He found a job, she found a job. Jade became edgier, paranoid. _Scared._

Her mind became her worst enemy. She hated it – it made her think about her childhood.

_(Hey, didn't this happen about fifteen or so years ago? _ _Of course, to mommy and daddy, remember?)_

She remembered perfectly well, and she hated it.

_Jade sat at the table, finishing off another poor Barbie with a hammer. Mommy sat in the kitchen drinking yet another cup of her "Medicine" It made mommy drowsy, weak and unbalanced, so Jade helped her into bed whenever she drank it. Daddy wasn't in much, and he always came home smelling like a perfume Jade had smelled at the mall in Hollywood. It wasn't hard to figure out something wasn't right. Daddy never kissed mommy goodnight anymore. Soon all Jade heard at night was the fighting, the screams, the bitter tears of her mother. Daddy left soon after. Left mommy, all alone. It didn't matter. Jade preferred it when it was just her and mommy. _

_They lived on their own for years, until Jade was fifteen. Then daddy came back, with a new shiny wife and a yappy little rat dog. He'd hurt Jade's mother too much already, and that just pushed her over the edge. Jade had to say goodbye to her mommy pretty quick. When Jade was seventeen, mommy committed suicide. _

_Then Jade promised herself. She'd never fall in love. Too bad her heart had other plans._

She found it so hard to trust, even when they were living together. It was just too much for her to believe that somebody, somebody so damn close to perfect could love her. And she was so scared, terrified she'd end up just like _mommy._ So she kept him all to herself, never let any girl anywhere, anytime near him. That was fine by him. He only had eyes for her, anyway.

On one cold December night, everything changed. She woke up from her nightmare to find out that it'd only just begun. She realized she couldn't go on. So while he was working she packed a bag. Not a trace of her was left when he got back, not a morsel of her being left behind.

_(Just like daddy.)_

She drove and drove, nowhere to go, nowhere to be.

_(She wants to go home, but nobody's home it's where she lies, broken inside.)_

She found herself at her old house, anyway. She couldn't bring herself to call it her home. It wasn't hers anymore, anyway. She just lied down in the abandoned house, on her mother's abandoned bed. It still smelled like her.

_(There's a place that I go that nobody knows, where the rivers flow and I call it home. And _there's_ no more lies; in the darkness, there's light. And nobody cries, there's only butterflies.)_

Three and a half years later, she's still in the same house.

Three and a half years later, he's still in the same house. He waits for her to come home, because he knows she will.

_(If you're out there, if you're somewhere, if you're moving on, I've been waiting for you wary since you've been gone.)_

She goes to her favourite coffee shop every day and orders the same thing she did in high school. He does the same thing sometimes. He forgets she's not there, and the pain comes crashing back down again. It didn't stop him saying those tragic last words, though.

He didn't realize why she wasn't like she was before. She was scarred, broken, and still in love with a boy who she left.

That day was just a normal day for the both of them. He walked about with a picture of his lost love and she walked into the old coffee shop with a book and a journal. He normally just walked, walked and wandered. He found an old coffee shop. Her old coffee shop. She was there, with her old black journal.

_(She hadn't changed a bit)_

He sat on the table nearest, facing her. Facing the girl that hadn't left his mind since three years. He just stared at her, taking her in. It didn't seem real, though his doubts were banished when her icy eyes shot up from the book and pen. Pain infused her and she ran out, forgetting her journal altogether. He knew he couldn't ever bring himself to read any so he grabbed the diary and pen and rushed out after her. She'd always been the better runner, though.

He caught up with her eventually. She was sitting, in the pouring rain on the sidewalk. Mascara and eyeliner tears trailing down her face, or was it the rain? Beck never really knew.

"Y-you left your book," He stutters, still amazed by her beauty. She takes it silently, letting her loose hair fall over her face. She always did like doing that.

_(She hadn't changed a bit)_

As he sat down next to her, he tucked some hair behind her ear, but she pushed his hand away.

"Don't." She said less than harshly. Her voice was hoarse, cracking and quiet. Miles away from the assertive and loud voice of an overly confident teenager with the world at her feet. It was funny to think that was only years ago.

"Why?" He simply asked her. She shook her heavy head and whispered.

"Don't bring up the past. It hurts too much," It was too much for him to bear, to see his first love, his one and only acting so different, so _weak._ Only this wasn't his first love. It wasn't his Jade. She's long gone.

It's a girl who's been hurt one too many times, a girl who missed her boyfriend, who misses her mommy, a girl who doesn't know what to do, she's a girl who's _broken inside._

_(You can bandage the damage; you never really can fix a heart_)

"Jade," He whispers back. "What's happened to you?" She blinks at him hazily. The last few years have just been blur of debts and tears and loss for her. A messy, blurry flurry of regret.

"What do you think happened to me, Beck?" It's the first time he's heard her say his name. She listens to a recording of him every night and hugs a shirt she took. She likes the way it still smells like him. The way she says his name still makes him shiver.

"I don't know, babe, I don't know."

"Ha!" She says without humour. "Me either." He shakes his head.

No, she was his Jade. Hey eyes flutter and she breathes in deeply. It's hard to stay awake when your nights are sleepless.

"You don't sleep, do you?" She shakes her head again, laughing at the irony of it all.

"Me either."

"I guessed." She said, smoothing her finger underneath the rims of his eyes. Small talk kept the questions at bay, but they were running out and the questions were coming out.

"Just tell me why, and I'll leave."

"I'm not the girl you fell in love with."

"You're not the girl I fell in love with?" He questioned. It was enough coming from her mouth, but when the words left his mouth it crushed her in the cruellest of ways.

"Now go."

"But Jade-"

"You said you'd leave!"

"Goodbye, Jade. I love you. I loved you forever." He said as he reluctantly left her in the rain, alone. She was alone again.

_(Just like mommy.)_

Life carries on. She thinks about him even more. She doesn't even know why she said no, why she turned him down. She just knows it's too late to turn back time. He isn't hers anymore. And she isn't his.

_So she smashed her rear view mirror, cause from now on she's never looking back._

**Well. That was my Bade break up story. I was very torn about whether or not to upload this but here we go. Thanks for reading…**


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